Chuck, I had the same hit about Terminator 2. There's also the Transformers, and I did a news story on a very expensive, very sophisticated, 'toy" versionhttp://www.designnews.com/document.asp?doc_id=256018

Al, the main apps I've heard of mentioned more than once are consumer, like reconfigurable furniture, or reconfigurable robots for space exploration and search and rescue. That's the macro-level tehcnmologies. For the nano and micro-Ievel it's usually various medical uses such as drug delivery mechanisms.

@Rob: The problem with your "simple economics" argument ("if robots create more jobs than they replace they would not be economically feasible") is that economics is not a zero-sum game. Higher productivity creates economic growth, which creates jobs.

Companies don't make money by eliminating jobs, they make money by selling products. If automation allows a company to make products at a lower cost, they can sell more products. If they sell more products, they will make more money. If the company makes more money, they will have more money to invest -- including in new employees.

Ann, this technology seems to reflect what we've already seen in numerous sci-fi books and movies. There are many examples, but one that jumps to mind is Terminator 2, where the terminator robot re-assembles itself after getting shot.

In the early years of computers, the computers did indeed create more jobs than they eliminated. That was partly due to poor implementation and apps that were not well designed for labor savings. That, of course, changed in time.

With robots, I wouldn't expect that delay. I would imagine the apps are available as the robots are created. So the labor savings would be immediate.

For this approach to gain traction, there may be a need for a killer app or specific market for these modular, self-reconfiguring robots to prove themselves in. OEM machines are often very niche oriented (relatively low number of new machines per year and a huge installed base developed over a much longer period). Makes it difficult for new approaches to break in.

Rob, I agree--in fact, it's simple arithmetic. I'm getting a little tired of hearing about all the supposed new jobs that will be created instead of all the jobs that will, obviously, in fact be taken away. What's also ignored in those arguments is--what happens to all the people whose jobs are taken away? And what happens to all the people trained for, and dependent on, that shrinking pool of good blue collar jobs?

In the past, there has been the myth that robots create more jobs (in robot design and manufacturing systems design) than they replace. But it's simple economics -- if robots create more jobs than they replace they would not be economically feasible -- and apparently they are economically feasible.

Industrial workplaces are governed by OSHA rules, but this isn’t to say that rules are always followed. While injuries happen on production floors for a variety of reasons, of the top 10 OSHA rules that are most often ignored in industrial settings, two directly involve machine design: lockout/tagout procedures (LO/TO) and machine guarding.

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